Recent Posts in the ‘Web Resources’ Category

Non Profit Website Design: Examples and Best Practices

Thursday, June 18th, 2009 by admin

Smashing Magazine Article Screenshot
Non profit websites share many of the same best practices as any website. They need to be user friendly, easily navigable, and use appropriate fonts, colors, and other design elements. But often a non profit website needs to offer more than your typical corporate site.

A non profit’s website needs to make it easy to find out more about their cause, to donate money, and to become more involved. It needs to make it easy for media contacts to find the information they need and the contact information of key personnel. And it needs to do all this in a way that’s inviting to the organization’s targeted donors and/or volunteers.

Smashing Magazine lists some best practices for designing non profit websites followed by some examples of non profit websites that are getting things right.

10 Surprisingly Easy and Startlingly Effective Ways to Improve Your Nonprofit E-Newsletter

Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 by admin

successkey1Nonprofit Marketing Guide.com outlines some best practices for nonprofit email newsletters and several quick fixes that can move your email newsletter to greatness; including writing powerful headlines and using an editorial calendar. She also discusses ways to convert your current print newsletter into an email newsletter. Check out the guide here.

The Basics of Email Metrics: Are Your Campaigns Working?

Thursday, April 30th, 2009 by admin

picture-7Here’s a cool article written by Idealware, an organization that provides candid Consumer-Reports-style reviews and articles about software of interest to nonprofits. They explain how to use basic email metrics to understand how your constituents are reacting to your emails. They also talk through the data points needed to track email performance, the most common formulas for standard email metrics, what they can tell you, and how to use them to improve results. Check it out here:
http://www.idealware.org/articles/email_metrics.php

Quick and Easy Guide to Online Advocacy

Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 by admin

quickneasy This guide, put together by Tactical Tech - an organization that works to advance the skills, tools and techniques of rights advocates, empowering them to utilize information and communications to help marginalized communities understand and affect progressive social, environmental and political change.

The guide offers ways to use social networking and web 2.0 tools to improve advocacy campaigns and aims to expose advocates to online services that are quick to use and easy to understand. It also provides descriptions of online services including social networking sites, image and video hosting services, and services that enhance an organizations web presence. Case studies, security concerns as well as the advantages and disadvantages of various web services are discussed, with the aim of improving advocates ability to conduct online advocacy campaigns. http://www.tacticaltech.org/onlineadvocacy

Cross-Posting on Different Social Networking Tools for Advocacy

Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 by admin

social-networking-logos3The guide was put together by DigiActive, An organization dedicated to helping grassroots activists around the world use digitaltechnology to increase their impact. The guide is an introduction on posting content on multiple platforms by using Twitter, Twitterfeed, and Facebook to help organizations promote their cause.
http://www.digiactive.org/2008/06/13/resource-what-should-youtube-do-for-activists/

What Should YouTube Do for Activists?

Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 by admin

Video of Oscar Grant Protest at Fruitvale BartA video put together by DigiActive, An organization dedicated to helping grassroots activists around the world use digitaltechnology to increase their impact. The video features an interview with Ramya Raghavan, the new Nonprofits and Activism Manager at YouTube.
http://www.digiactive.org/2008/06/13/resource-what-should-youtube-do-for-activists/

An Introduction to Twitter Activism

Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 by admin

twtr-cover-194The guide was put together by DigiActive, An organization dedicated to helping grassroots activists around the world use digitaltechnology to increase their impact. Following the recent protests in Moldova (April 2009), the value of Twitter as a tool for digital activism is more prominent than ever.  Yet in addition to bringing greater awareness to that tool, the hype surrounding Moldova revealed misunderstanding of the value of of Twitter for activism and, even though the realists responded strongly, there was not a stand-alone resource which clearly defined how Twitter could be used by activists. Download the guide here: http://sergykalstudios.blogspot.com/2006/07/understanding-image-resolution.html

An Introduction to Facebook Activism

Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 by admin

facebook2This guide was put together by DigiActive, An organization dedicated to helping grassroots activists around the world use digitaltechnology to increase their impact. It is a quick introduction on how to use Facebook in your activism campaign and includes real-life examples of Facebook activism campaigns from Egypt, Burma, and Morocco.
http://www.digiactive.org/2008/06/28/guide-a-digiactive-introduction-to-facebook-activism/

Understanding Colors for the Web

Friday, April 17th, 2009 by admin

Choosing colors for web projects is slightly more complicated than choosing colors for print projects. Due to the following variables, your viewers will see the colors of your site differently:

1. Viewers see your website on different kinds of monitors (LCDs and CRTs)
2. They work on different platforms (PCs often display colors darker than MACs)
3. Computers are calibrated differently
4. How ’safe’ your web palette is determines the size of your palette (More color accessibility = fewer colors)

colorsWeb-Safe Colors

This is a very limited web color palette of 256 colors. If you want to be super safe and design with this palette, then you can be mostly sure that most people, despite of their computer variations, will see your colors more or less similarly. This is the safest color palette to chose from, but if you’re looking for a little bit more variety, take it to the next level.

Web-Smart colors

If the Web-Safe color palette doesn’t do you good, the Web-Smart palette is  slightly more adventurous and consists of 4096 colors. With recent advances in technology, more and more browsers can see up to 4096 colors safely. There is still a chance that some folks with old-school monitors or browsers will see only the web safe color palette, and the colors you’ve picked may revert to the closest color in the web safe palette. But for the most part, you’ll be good.

Unsafe palette

Colors from whole RGB spectrum. If you pick a random color that isn’t Web-Safe or Web-Smart color, a selected few will see your color exactly as you intended. A larger number will see it revert to the nearest Web-Smart color, which won’t be too much of a jump. A few will see it revert to the closes Web-Safe color, which could be a dramatic difference.

Check out this cool link where you can choose your own colors in the different categories: http://www.ficml.org/jemimap/style/color/wheel.html

Understanding Content Management Systems

Friday, April 17th, 2009 by admin

cmsWhat is a Content Management System (CMS)?

A CMS is a dynamic back-end for your website that allow you (the client) to manage the content of your website using an online system. You need not have any knowledge of HTML at all; All you got to do, is select the page you want to edit, and edit your content in a window that looks just like Microsoft Word!

What is an Open-Source CMS?

An Open-Source CMS is a non-proprietary back-end system that shares it’s code and it’s systems online amongst an open community of developers. The community of developers that work with a specific open-source CMS are constantly adding to and updating the system to make it better. Technical support for the system is also available freely via online forums. We greatly support this community-supported system for web development.

Kinds of Open-Source CMSs

There are a variety of open-source CMSs available in the world of web. Some commonly used ones are JOOMLA , DRUPAL , WORDPRESS , AMP (Activist Mobilization Platform developed by Radical Designs ) and . None of these is better or worse than the other. The web developer will often chose a CMS based on project needs. It is good to share the scope of your website with your developer and have them guide you in the selection of an appropriate system.